In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel

by Shari Goldhagen

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  for my family

  contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  1. Three Blue-Eyed Girls Go to the Movies

  2. We Still Don’t Have a Winner

  3. History of Flight

  4. We Don’t Get Today

  5. Scraps of Things She Used to Know

  6. I’ve Never Been, but I Hear It’s Righteous

  7. In Another Country

  8. You Always Swim Home

  9. Would You Tell Me If You Were?

  10. In Some Other World, He Probably Did

  11. Successful Ditching

  12. I Guess I Knew That

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Shari Goldhagen

  Praise for the Author

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1 three blue-eyed girls go to the movies

  CORAL COVE, FLORIDA

  Adam Zoellner has 266 days left.

  The first day of kindergarten at Coral Cove Elementary, Adam shoved Sean Dooley into a wall of cubbies when Sean called him a bastard. He wasn’t entirely clear of the word’s meaning; he just knew his grandfather sometimes used it when arguing with his mother after everyone thought he was asleep, knew it was somehow a slam on his mom. Sean pushed back, and Adam’s nose smashed into oatmeal-colored concrete—blood droplets splashing on linoleum flooring. Adam was biting Sean’s forearm when Mrs. Krass rushed from the art easels to intervene. The school didn’t have a full-time nurse, so a teacher’s aide walked Adam, nose pinched with a brown paper towel, to the assistant principal’s office.

  The bleeding had long stopped, but at the assistant principal’s insistence, Adam was still sitting with his head back when his mother charged in a half hour later. Wearing a monogrammed butcher’s apron from her parents’ ice cream shop, she was twenty-five and ludicrously beautiful. Anger coloring the apples of her cheeks, she scooped Adam into her arms.

  “Ms. Zoellner.” The assistant principal stood, and even at five, Adam recognized the hint of desire in the man’s voice, a different tone entirely than the one he’d had when lecturing Adam about using words to resolve conflicts.

  “And for your information,” his mother said, as if it were the next logical beat in conversation, “you lean forward for a nosebleed; otherwise, you can choke on blood.”

  She whisked Adam out before Mr. Clark could even apologize. Adam didn’t realize how upset she was until his mother was fastening him into the passenger seat of his grandparents’ station wagon, her light fingers examining his face. More than the silent tears dampening her face, it was the panic in her eyes that pulverized everything inside of him—the first time he understood the awesome responsibility of being someone’s whole world.

  “I’m okay, Mommy,” he lied, pushing a smile. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  His mother calmed, called him her “good boy.” Her terror abated, and her eyes reverted to their normal sad gray as she asked what happened, and he made up a story about fighting with Sean Dooley over the good crayons.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  That was the moment Adam realized he was good at pretending, at convincing people he felt things he didn’t—the moment he decided he wanted to be an actor.

  It was also the start of his internal countdown. The years, months, and weeks until he could leave their drowsy little Florida town forty-five minutes east of the beach and an hour southwest of Disney World.

  The next day at school, Adam played nicely with the girls in the housekeeping area, avoided Sean altogether, and paid rapt attention to the alphabet exercises, even though his mother had already taught him to read. He did everything in his power to guarantee she never came racing into the assistant principal’s office again.

  Thirteen years, he kept it up. Every aced test, drama club performance, and fly ball caught in left field became one more rung on the ladder out of Coral Cove and the pressure of meaning too much to someone.

  He has 266 days left.

  A fat packet with his early admission agreement and scholarship information arrived from New York University two days ago, and classes start September 7—266 days.

  Wearing his own monogrammed Sally’s Scoops apron, Adam is behind the counter at his grandparents’ ice cream shop on a Friday in mid-December, rereading the glossy college brochure for the fifth time and contemplating how he’s going to tell his mother.

  On the ancient television in the corner, Nightly News shows images of president-elect Bill Clinton, and Adam can’t help but relate—boy from a small town gets out, a boy with a single mother.

  She’ll understand; she tried to leave once, too.

  So distracted, he almost doesn’t notice the rustling of red and green tinsel on the door when Molly Kelly walks in.

  “I was hoping you’d be working.” Molly smiles and threads black hair behind her ear. Two years ahead of him at Coral Cove High, Molly had played Sarah to his Sky in Guys and Dolls, Gwendolen opposite his Jack in The Importance of Being Earnest. He’d had a crush on her dating back nearly as far as the escape-plan countdown; she’d been dating Sean Dooley’s older brother almost as long. “It’s been, like, forever.”

  Sliding the packet of NYU information underneath the register, Adam lets Molly give him an awkward hug across the counter and asks how things are going at the local community college where she’s studying something.

  “I’m actually taking this semester off.” She shrugs, clavicle delicate in a blue cotton top that matches her eyes. “Working full-time at the diner, trying to save up and move out of my parents’ place.”

  Adam nods, says nothing about Kyle Dooley, and makes her a waffle cone of rocky road. It had been her favorite when she used to come by so they could run lines while he worked.

  “You still qualify for the friends-and-family discount,” he says when she tries to pay.

  “Aww, you’re too sweet.” She takes a quick lick. “Speaking of free stuff, it’s, like, totally last minute, but do you wanna see Eons & Empires tonight? My manager’s kid got sick, so he gave me his tickets.”

  “I always liked the comics,” Adam says, though he may be the only teenage boy in the entire Western world who’s never actually read one.

  “Yeah, I’m kinda curious, and you and I haven’t hung out in a while.”

  He’s seen her exactly twice since she graduated—an impressive feat in a town of only twenty-five thousand people. A year ago she’d served him a turkey club at Coral Cove Diner, and then, a few months later, he’d spotted her making out with Kyle behind the hardware store next to Sally’s Scoops.

  “It’s the eight o’clock show,” Molly is saying. “I know I’m giving you, like, tons of warning.”

  The store closes at ten, and Friday is the biggest night of the week—kids from CCH and the college branch campus, couples on dates, and all the weekend tourists en route to the beach or amusement parks who wander into the shop to use the bathroom and stay to buy sundaes and Florida-shaped magnets. Closing even a few hours early will likely cost the store several hundred dollars. In all the years he’s been working at Sally’s, Adam has never complained that his grandparents pay him minimum wage, never yelled at unpleasant customers or pocketed money from the till; no one could ever say Anna Zoellner’s bastard son wasn’t responsible.

  But it’s Molly Kel
ly, maybe the only thing he’s ever wanted that wasn’t a thousand miles north or three thousand miles west.

  And if he goes out with Molly, he can delay going back to his grandparents’ house, having to walk past his mother reading one of her fat Russian novels on the couch. He won’t have to tell her about NYU, won’t have to tell her that he’s leaving.

  “Sure.” Adam grins; enough complete strangers comment on his smile that he’s pretty sure it looks good. “Let’s go to the movies.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Adam and Molly are in the third row of the sold-out one-screen theater three stores down from Sally’s, and he’s hyperaware of three things:

  First, he hates the film—all special effects and nonsensical sci-fi about alternate Earths, with an Academy Award–winning actor wearing a bald cap and growling overwrought lines as the draconian Captain Rowen.

  Second, Sean Dooley followed them from Sally’s and is seated behind him, eyes boring into the side of Adam’s skull. This could be because Adam is out with Molly (who may or may not be dating his brother) or Sean might still be pissed about last baseball season, when Coach put Adam in at third base after Sean was suspended for cheating. It may honestly be a holdover from that first day of kindergarten. Sean is quite possibly the only person out of Coral Cove’s twenty-five thousand who doesn’t like Adam.

  Third, Molly seems oddly engrossed in the movie, hand stalling midway between her mouth and the popcorn bag on the armrest between them.

  Everyone in the theater collectively gasps at something happening on-screen. Molly taps her foot to his and wrinkles her nose. So very pretty. He nudges her foot back, notices the curve of her calf, and has absolutely no idea what happens during the rest of the film.

  It’s after ten when the movie ends, and they follow the crowd into the parking lot toward Molly’s twelve-year-old Honda. Keys in hand, she makes no effort to unlock the driver’s side door.

  “Do you wanna grab coffee or something?” he asks, even though the only places open are the diner where she works and Captain Ahab’s Bar, where everyone will know they’re not of age because everyone knows everyone’s business in Coral Cove.

  “It’s such a nice night.” She inhales deeply. “We could go to the beach?”

  Molly fueled most of his masturbation fantasies in ninth grade, and though he’s not particularly proud of it, he was thinking of her when he lost his virginity to Dana Mott after homecoming sophomore year, thought of her all last spring when he was dating Abby Patterson. This time his smile is unconscious.

  The drive takes nearly an hour, and they recount their performances on the CCH stage—the sanitized strip club from Guys and Dolls, how they took all the dirty words and cigarettes out of Grease.

  “How about Nikki Summer, our pregnant Hot Box dancer? Like, I kept expecting Ms. Smithfield to make her drop out when she started showing, but no.” Molly is shaking her head.

  “It probably made for a more realistic strip club,” Adam jokes. “Or so I’ve heard.”

  Even though Molly is laughing, Adam senses her brewing melancholy. She may have had a lovely voice and an amazing figure, but Molly never really was that great of an actress.

  From the rearview mirror, her class of ninety-one tassel dangles: 266 days.

  His mother will understand; she left after high school, too.

  The closest beach isn’t the nicest, but when they arrive a few minutes past eleven, it’s still a haunting mix of inky sea and inky sky. Slipping off flip-flops, they walk for a while, close enough that their arms occasionally bump. When they reach the lapping fingers of the surf, they stop and stare at the vanishing point on the horizon.

  Adam reaches for Molly’s hand.

  She looks surprised, as if she hadn’t brought him here for exactly this.

  “Whad’ya think of the movie?” she asks, but holds his fingers when he tries to let go of hers.

  “It was really big,” he says diplomatically.

  “Yeah.” Molly looks at the cycling waves. “My favorite part was when they showed all the different lives of the Snow sisters in all those other universes. Like how they got to be princesses and movie stars and doctors.”

  Adam doesn’t remember this but bobs his head in agreement.

  “I mean, how cool would it be to get to do so many different things?”

  Then he does recall the montage, a series of costume changes for the two lead actresses, their differing hair colors—one red, one gold—standing in for character development.

  He wonders if the reason those scenes didn’t stand out to him is because, since the second day of kindergarten, he’s always been everything to everybody in this universe. Only eighteen, and he’s already played a million different roles—class clown, class president, probably valedictorian in June. He can get high with the guys who grow pot in their basements as easily as he can make his grandmother laugh with a clean joke. Teachers are so charmed, that he’s pretty sure they don’t even look at his work anymore before stamping an A, and tourists at Sally’s Scoops always pronounce him “such a nice young man.” Nobody could ever say Anna Zoellner’s bastard son wasn’t an all-around good kid.

  But apparently not everyone had that same jack-of-all-trades existence.

  “It was like those girls had constant do-overs,” Molly is saying.

  “You just turned twenty,” Adam says. “What do you need to do over?”

  She shrugs, mumbles something about different experiences, which he assumes means not dating Kyle Dooley exclusively for centuries. “I dunno, maybe work harder in school, go away to college.”

  “You can do that. Just ace a semester at community and transfer.”

  “Nah, that stuff never came easy for me,” she says. “I can’t, especially now.”

  He doesn’t ask what “now” means. It’s after midnight; he’s only got 265 days.

  Apropos of nothing, she brightens. “You were always good at everything,” she says. “Are you headed to Gainesville next fall?”

  Wouldn’t that be easier? If he went to Florida or Florida State with the other kids at CCH who actually leave town to attend school full-time? He could come home on weekends to keep his grandparents’ shop in cheap, honest labor, could still eat China One takeout with his mother and talk to her about books when she got home from her job at the hospital, could continue making sure she never looked terrified over his well-being again.

  He hadn’t applied anywhere within three hundred miles.

  “I actually got a scholarship to NYU.” It’s the first time he’s spoken this out loud.

  Her happiness is so genuine, any annoyance he had over being dragged to the beach to not make out dissipates. “That’s amazing,” she says. “You’re really going to do stuff, aren’t you?”

  “Molly.” He takes both her hands in his, squeezes; he’s always been good at convincing people of things that aren’t true. “You can do anything you want.”

  These must be the magic words, because when he leans in to kiss her, she doesn’t stop him but opens her mouth and hooks her fingers in the belt loops of his jeans to draw him closer.

  “I always thought you had a thing for me,” she says in the fractured seconds when their lips and tongues aren’t touching.

  “Guess I didn’t hide it well.”

  She smells like sand and strawberries and baby powder. Yards and yards of silk skin under her flimsy tank top.

  “Thought you were really cute, too,” she says.

  This is a bad idea.

  Not because she may still be with Kyle Dooley—the Dooley brothers are the kind of overathletic assholes who pepper John Hughes films. And not because Adam has been on a few dates with Joy Keller, and Joy might not realize he’s simply marking time.

  It’s a bad idea because Molly clearly wants something, and he’s got only 265 days. Because 265 days is still a lot of time—enough to fall in love and apply to state schools and end up a teacher at Coral Cove High, directing musicals or coach
ing the subpar baseball team.

  But it’s Molly Kelly.

  Cock so hard it hurts, his eyes flutter closed. In the darkness the tide sounds the same as cars that pass on the highway facing his bedroom window, everyone on their way to somewhere better.

  “Always liked you.” Molly’s words muffled in the ever-diminishing space between them. Words he wanted seven hundred days ago, when he was a sophomore and she was a senior, when he didn’t have the escape route mapped out yet.

  Hands beneath his shirt, she runs fingers across his stomach, around his sides. He trembles as she dips below the waist of his jeans. Does he even have anything? He’s not in the habit of bringing condoms to the ice cream store.

  “What the fuck, Molly!” Two hundred feet away, a shout.

  Confusion.

  And then Sean Dooley—who’s got four inches and fifty pounds on Adam—is yanking him apart from Molly, while Kyle Dooley, who is even bigger, is standing next to her looking as though he might cry.

  “What are you doing here?” Molly sounds truly outraged, which makes Adam feel slightly less used.

  “You’re going out with freaking Zoellner?” Kyle says Adam’s name as if it’s a genital fungus and reaches for Molly’s elbow. “The punk who stole third base from Sean?”

  “You had your idiot brother follow me to the movies, didn’t you?” Molly bats Kyle’s hand off her arm.

  “It’s not like that. I was worried—”

  “Leave me alone,” she says.

  “Molly—” Kyle looks monumentally sad, but Adam steps forward anyway.

  “Look, she said she wants to be left alone—” he starts.

  Sean cuts him off. “Zoellner, shut the fuck up!”

  Adam does; 520 days ago he would have fought for Molly’s honor, staked a claim, done something. Tonight he tries not to sigh and waits to see how badly the situation will deteriorate.

  “We’ll figure this out,” Kyle is saying to Molly.

  “I already told you what I want to do,” she says, but sounds much less convinced.

  “Can we just talk about it?” Kyle asks, and Molly lowers her eyes. “Lemme give you a ride home.”